Friday, February 7, 2014

Will We See Bigger Bags?

With the chances coming in warlords it has me thinking, will we be getting bigger bags? Or how about this one, will we even need them?

Over the course of the years I have mentioned that I would like bigger bags or more storage space. It often comes up in nearly every topic I can squeeze it into. Things I think can use an update? The starting bag. Things they missed this expansion? A new bag from the basic cloth. What changes would I like to see to gathering professions? Stack going to 50 or 100 or 200. Easy additions that would make life easier? A second row of purchasable bag slots in our bank. What would I be willing to buy from a cash shop? Bigger bags.

See, no matter what and were and when we talk about anything that has a way I can connect it with storage space I will find a way to fit "we need more bag space" into the conversation. It has been a huge talking point of mine for as long as I have been writing here and even longer, as long as I have been playing games. Storage is always the single most important little thing in any game.

So with all that said, lets talk about our bag space come warlords and what will, or will not, be in them as there are a lot of changes that impact them coming with the new expansion. Maybe even some things we have not heard of yet.

What is being added to decrease our need for bag space?

Stack sizes are being increased.

I could not even guess how many players have asked for this change. The only thing that might be harder to guess is why it took them so long to make a change like this. Now lets not get all excited and think there were be 1000 count stacks like they finally made arrows stack to before they removed them for hunters, even if that would be awesome. For all we know we could only be moving up to a 50 stack for our ores, herbs and leather.

Now do not get me wrong at all, even a change to a 50 count stack would be a very welcome change but you know what would be better, a change to a 100 count stack like many items seem already stack to. Or maybe even a 200 stack like they already did for one type of ore this expansion but not all. Why not all?

If I were a betting elf, which I am not, I would say we are looking at stacks of 100 coming in warlords. I hope I am wrong and it is more, 200 really does have a nice ring to it.

The only thing I do still wonder about more than stack size is what they will consider stacking higher. There are still things in game that could stack but don't. There are also many items that only stack to 5 even at this stage in the game and it makes you wonder why.

Will cloth be included. It is as much a gathering material as ore or herbs or leather is. So I hope, really hope, that cloth will be included. But will finished products be increased as well. Bars made from that ore, will they still be at 20 or will they stack higher. Bolts of cloth, heavy or magnificent versions of leather, the products from milling, gems from prospecting, all that same questions.

So yes, hearing increased stack sizes will be welcome no matter how much they are increased or how many things they are increased for, but we can not really say that increased stack sizes will save us vast amounts of space. At least not yet. But we can be sure it will be saving us space and could save us massive amounts of space depending on how high they decided to stack things.

Gear is being simplified.

First off, who out there is looking at this in the same way I am? Let me explain before so you will know what the heck I am talking about.

I will still end up having 2 sets of gear, 2 full sets of gear. Just because I can heal in my guardian leather body pieces doesn't mean I will. When first gearing up my off spec of healing, for example, it will be fine to use the bear gear to get into content but I will surely want a different chest piece for my bear set and for my tree set. I would want the ones with the best secondary stats for that spec on it. So perhaps a chest piece with crit will be my bear piece while a chest piece with haste will be my tree chest piece. Nice that my agility will change to intellect when I change specs, but that is all it will do. It will not change to the gems I want for the spec. It will not change to the enchant I want for that spec. It will not change for the secondary stats I want for that spec. While there might be a few cases here and there where two specs use the same secondary stats and I get the perfect piece with no gem slots that can not be enchanted and it could really be used by both specs, that will be extremely rare. We will not really be having pieces that switch with our specs, at least not if we want to gear those specs up to be the best they can be.

Lets say that piece had a gem slot and it could be enchanted. I am not going to regem the chest piece each time I switch specs. I am not going to reenchant the chest piece each time I switch specs. I am going to get a second chest piece done up correctly for the spec I am in. If anything, this ability to test out other specs because the pieces change has more likelihood to make me use more bag space, should I keep the second spec to play it seriously, then to reduced bag space.

In the case of my priest and my shaman where I play disc/shadow and elemental/resto I just DPS when questing and do not have separate DPS pieces, not even trinkets, I use my healing trinkets, they do enough DPS to kill everything, even rares solo, so no need. With the removal of hit and the gear changing, I might actually get some extra trinkets just for DPS even if now I just do not care about it. Because now I say I am a healer only, but when this change comes, I really can be both without much effort, so I will need more pieces, not fewer.

Now back to the question I asked, who else it looking at it the same way as I am?

With the exception of the OCD weirdos like myself (and you if you agreed with me) over all this will greatly decrease the need for gear space for many people and that means more bag space for them. So while this change might increase the need for bag space for the few, like myself, for the majority it will most likely be a nice little decrease in the need for bag space.

The Toy Box is being added.

I almost wanted to shed a tear when I heard this was being added. I had a wide smile and a slight chuckle escaped even if a tear didn't quite make it. As a self proclaimed junk collector I have so many toys. Most of those toys I never use or intend to use but I still refuse to throw them away as I have already lost more toys than I can count because they were removed from the game and I wish I still had them.

When this change comes this will not only clear out so much space in the bags of my main who has most of those toys but on all my alts who kept toys because they too wished to have them to play with from time to time.

Like the sky mirror or smites compass. They are toys and as such will be put in our toy box which will be accessible from all our characters so they will no longer take up space. This means I save two spaces on my main for these two pieces and one or two spaces on many alts that might have one or both of them. So the toy box is not only clearing up one space in one characters bag for each toy that goes into it, it could be saving 5 or 10 or 20 spaces if you have multiple characters with that toy.

Lots of space for many players will be saved by this change and of all the changes I mention here it will probably (depending on how far they go with stacks and what stacks) be the biggest impact on freeing up bag space for me.

There will be an heirloom tab.

Now for some this will not save any space. For others it will save a fair deal of space. For everyone that has even one, it will at least save a little space.

Quite honestly the biggest asset to this change in my opinion is that I will no longer need to wonder "where the hell are my heirlooms" or "which character did I leave them on". Even if you have every single heirloom in the game you usually send them to the character that needs them and as that is most likely the character you are leveling, meaning a new character, they not only have more bag space because they have not reached the point of being cluttered down collecting junk yet, but they are wearing said items so they are really not taking up any bag space in that sense.

However, not having to find bag space for them when not using them is indeed saving bag space. So even if it is not a lot, it is saving bag space.

Quest items are no longer stored in your bag.

Uh, yeah, I said the game needed this ages ago. It is nice to see blizzard added it finally. While it is true that quest items disappear when you turn in the quest they can still clutter up a lot of space. Ever been on a server with only the starting bag and they send you on a bunch of quests, one to collect 2 different items, another they give you one item to use on something and a third tells you to collect four different flowers, or something like that.

So you have this lame ass starting 16 slot bag and lets say you have your stone and a little food, once you add that to the 7 additional quest things that will be taking up space then 9 of your 16 slots are already gone. Ouch. Not very user friendly.

I can't tell you the number of times I had to throw stuff away because of some damn quest item taking up space in my bag. They are just clutter and I am glad they will no longer be cluttering my bag up thank you very much.

Yes, I realize the game has changed and we can usually snag a tiny bag or two in the starting zone. But still, when first starting bag space, and how you handle it, is a vital part of game play. It will be nice not to have to deal with quest items in the mix any longer.

And then there are the cases, like on a few of my characters, where I have quest items taking up space in my bank. This will be bank space cleared up. Oh, why would I do that you ask?

One example would be the "eat all cataclysm food" achievement. There are two pieces of food you can only get while on a quest (unless they changed it, been a while since I tried to sell any). Before you do the quest the vendor is not there, when you are done with the quest line the vendor becomes hostile. So I have one character sitting on that quest, which just happens to have a quest item associated with it. So one more open space for her, booya, and I can still keep buying those 2 food items and selling them way over priced on the auction house to people that are achievement hunting. So yes, I do have quest items taking up space in my bags for a prolonged period of time on a few characters for various reasons like that one.

Added ability to craft from materials in your bank.

This is a huge plus for the bag space issue in my opinion. On so many characters I carry materials on me just in case someone needs something made for them while we are in a raid. Such as a stack of each raw gem type on my bear who is a jewelcrafter. Now I can just throw those babies in my gem bag in my bank. That opens up some more space in my traveling bag while going into a space in my bank that only gems can go into anyway so having those empty spaces are a waste if nothing is in them. So I fill those empty spaces with gems and make empty spaces in my every day bag. Double win.

There are so many little plus like things that come from them making this change, but this post is about bag space so that is all I am going to mention and for bag space this change will be a huge plus because you do not need to carry all that stuff around with you any longer.

They might add a transmog like diablo.

While this is not on the table for the release of warlords it is surely on their radar and they are considering it, they have said so much. For people that like to collect armor sets for mog purposes or just for collection purposes, this would free up more space than anything else.

For a certain sub set of players this would be a dream and a half come true. Even if not the mog fanatic myself I can respect the people that really get into it and their issues with bag space being there are thousands and thousands of pieces for each slot and lots of slots that show. It means they have a lot to choose from in a very little collection of places to store them. Their bag issues have to be 10 times worse than mine and if I am always complaining about it I feel really bad for them and how screw they must feel when deciding what to keep and what to toss.

While this is not something that will be happening when warlords is released, I do see it happening, perhaps not even by the end of warlords but surely no further than whatever the expansion after it is when that is released.

So with all those things being changed in reference to bag space and how we use it, no matter who you are or how you play there will be some free spaces to come when warlords comes out. Maybe even a lot of spaces, like for me with my toys being put into their toy box.

So I would have to ask again, will we be getting bigger bags in warlords, or will we even need them?

But..

There always is a but isn't there? If they do not keep increasing bag size what will tailors have to make to sell? They can not just keep releasing the same size with the new cloth. It would be quicker and easier and cheaper to just go farm old cloth to make a bag than to get new cloth to make it if that were the case. Effectively this would destroy the bag market over time. It is bad enough that mists was the first expansion ever to not even have a basic bag to make, do you think they will screw over tailors two expansions in a row?

And what about crafting bags? Do you think we have seen the end of them? I have been suggesting that crafting bags held larger stacks for awhile, as part of their selling point, maybe they will make ore stack higher but only in a mining bag. Who is to know just yet. But if they are the same as they are now, will we ever see bigger ones of them?

And again, will we need bigger ones with all that space being filled up.

As someone who seems to have everything, in large quantities, I can tell you one thing for sure about bigger bags. If they make it, we will fill it.

But with all the changes being made an all the space being freed up will we really need it, will we finally be done with the bag space issue?

also - not sure what has happen, but one use to be able to edit comments or remove them and NOT be stuck in having to post them. WHere did that feature go? Even the ""preview" now forces one to comit to the comment.

There was a change a while back, you should have a horizontal scroll bar down at the bottom of the comment form (below the Publish button, I think) that'll get you over to the Edit button. Apparently this forced narrow margin blog system (which is the ONLY REASON my comments look so long (*cough*)) is a bit too narrow for the reply form. :)

Oh, the bag space problem...My raid leader kicked me once for not having the bagspace to pick up a healthstoneSee, I collect shields. I've had to sell some of them and I still feel bad about it.Can we have those holiday clothes and hats added to toys, please?

I thought they mentioned that stack sizes for some things (like ore) would be going up to 1000... but I may be imagining things, took a quick look and can't find a reference for that. Anything bigger than current would be helpful, though, even if it's 50. And yes, things that arbitrarily stack to 5 for no reason (*glares at scopes*) need to go away. I think the ore stacking to 200 is because the primary use I've had for it this expansion has been as currency to buy recipes, can't recall using it much for actual crafting.

I think most progression players will end up with 2 sets of gear but it'll be a lot less critical. In a future world where secondary stats are closer in value, the difference between optimal and worst stat combinations will be smaller than ever. You'll want to get one full set of gear ASAP but after that you can take your time. The days of healing priests having 32% hit when running shadow will be over. I'd imagine in most cases I won't even bother carrying multiple sets, especially on toons that don't regularly raid. My druid, who I rarely play and is my worst geared toon at the moment, carries about 25 pieces of gear in his bags. For a toon like that, it'll be closer to 0 in WoD. That's awesome.

For heirlooms in the current game, and I only found this out recently, for those running Altaholic, it has a great search function in one of the bottom tabs that'll even scan across servers (and apparently accounts although it doesn't for me), you can search for things like heirloom items and it'll tell you exactly where they are, even if they're equipped on a toon. An heirloom tab in WoD will be better, of course, but that search might save some grief until then.

The quest items thing is the only one I'm somewhat concerned about... I sometimes want to use a quest item even after I've finished the quest (but haven't turned in)... say it's a wand that makes an elite non-elite so you can kill it... if you're still in the middle of the kill zone, you don't want to lose access to that quest item. Right now, once I'm done a quest, I no longer get the quest item showing up in my quest log (I use a quest add-on, not sure if that's the case with the base UI) so I have to go into my inventory to use the quest items at that point. If they aren't in inventory... not sure what'll happen for me. I'll definitely have to quest more carefully. :)

Regarding future tmog options, I could see them turning Void Storage into an account-wide system... I don't see a system where you automatically and permanently learn the look of any item you get working in a game that requires dedicated gold sinks... but I could see them making Void Storage into something like that, you'd basically "TE" (TransEnchant) an item into Void Storage for a cost that'd house the look of the item but not the item itself, and make VS account-wide... and, presumably, significantly larger, searchable (would help if you could tag looks based on criteria like colour, "bigness", etc).

I'm not sure the basic bag needing to be enlarged is a requirement but I'd still like it to happen, 32 slots should be okay. I've been okay so far with the current bags being previous-expansion... when I heard there wouldn't be new normal bags I stocked up on cheap mats pre-MoP and I'm still selling through my inventory (when I stock up, I stock up, and I even lost a bunch of mats due to expiring mail). Can't speak for anyone else but another expansion with viable Wrath and Cat bags would be fine with me. ;) Still, I'd expect a standard 24-slot bag using basic WoD mats. I could also see that becoming the largest normal bag size for the rest of the game's life, just replacing it with whatever the next normal mats are each expansion and letting the market determine which ones are the best price.

I don't recall them mentioning any actual sizes but if they did I missed it. 1000 would be awesome.

If they can make secondary stats closer to the point where it does not matter it will be a lot better. Hunters are close to that now but even if all stats are equal (sort of) I prefer to stack crit right now and another hunter in my guild stacks haste because he wants quicker stats. While there is not much of performance difference, there will always be a feel difference.

Lets say, for arguments sake, all stats were equal for a healer. I would, in most cases, prefer haste for faster heals. It allows for picking up the pieces faster and if haste was just as good as anything else I would want an all haste build just like the hunter in my guild likes his all haste build.

Do not think that just because they equal out stats that people will still not stack because of preference or even stack for 0.1% theoretical difference.

I use altoholics as well and track them with that, but to find them I need to remember the names of them. I have a hard enough time remembering my name sometimes. lol

I agree, I think we will see a standard 24 slot bag and that might end up being the last we see except for maybe some extremely expensive to make larger bags just to throw tailors a bone.

So you want crit and have a crit set... your buddy likes haste and has a haste set... that doesn't mean YOU have to have a haste set sitting in your bags. :) The min-maxers will want multiple pieces of gear, that won't change, but that will be a lot more optional than it is today. My main monks each have about 10 different stat pieces in their bags, most not even gemmed/enchanted, just in case they're ever better than what I'm running. I won't be doing that in WoD, I don't think.

I use AtlasLoot to get the name and Altaholic to do the search. Simple enough. :)

If I want haste on a different fight it DOES mean I want to have a haste set in my bags.

I often find myself keeping pieces for "what if" scenarios as well. I even have them all upgraded with valor, hey, needed to find something to spend it on.

You will be doing that in WoD, more so than you do now. Now you might be willing to take that hit/crit piece knowing you can take off some of that hit or crit as needed. But with no hit and if you end up with mastery and mastery is bad for you except in AoE you will want a mastery/cirt one and a haste/ crit one where as before you would just reforge the one and it would serve both purposes.

As much as they say they will balance secondaries so it won't make a different, hate to break it to you, but they won't.

As much as they say that gear switching specs will solve issues, hate to break it to you, but it won't.

Or in a case like mine now, where I will just DPS in my disc gear as shadow because I can not be bothered to make a full other set, now with the warlords way being I will need fewer pieces, I will most likely have a shadow and a disc set, which means more bag space wasted, not less.

As odd as it sounds them simplifying gear and removing reforging just made gear a lot more complicated in some situations.

I am looking forward to the toys, heirlooms and quest items the most. Heirlooms aren't a big deal now that they can be mailed cross server. I can just create a new toon on an empty server and mail it all my heirlooms, but it will still be nice not to have to deal with the mailing back and forth and finding them.

I personally don't care about the bigger top end bags, but I do wish they'd add lower size easily craftable with current mats bags. That way I wouldn't have to farm up old mats to make bags for alts. I don't need 28 slot royal bags on all my alts but easily craftable like 24 slot bags would be awesome.

The diablo style transmog sounds cool, (having not played diablo I'm not familiar with it), but I doubt we'll see it any time soon. It sounds more like one of those things they'd really like to have, but have not done a clear design for. They'd need a way to keep the replayability of the old content from people hunting for transmog items. So it'd have to be a database of every item and whether you'd ever looted it kind of thing that would take up a lot of space for every toon out there.

I really think they screwed to pooch this expansion when it came to bags by not making a basic cloth bag. Not sure what was going through their mind on that one.

I understand the statement that they need to keep the replayability of old content but I do not really believe it. They are already offering 90s for sale, they are making sure old stuff is easier to solo, they are making leveling as fast as humanly possible. I don't really think they care about older content at all any more. It is just clutter in their mind.

I agree about the basic crafting bags. Netherweave Bags are still the primary bags that most people use (especially for alts) and they're from BC... All the other bags are still way too expensive for the number of slots they give. Frostweave bags are not profitable at all to craft because Frostweave cloth is so hard to get. Embersilk bags are at least profitable but 400g for a 22 slot vs 16g for a 16 slot is a big gap... The 2k for a Royal Satchel though is just stupid. They need a bag that's cheaper to craft and doesn't have a stupid daily CD for the mats.